(LifeSiteNews) — After liberal activists lobbied to have teachers barred from leading prayer at football games, students in Putnam County, Tennessee, banded together and led the crowd in prayer themselves after Friday’s game.
“Satan’s power was defeated tonight, as the threat of a legal action to forbid prayer after the game was overwhelmed by player led prayer supported by parents and fans in solidarity on Overall Field,” shared Bob Vick, an alum of Putnam County Schools. “God bless the Baxter and Stone players for their faith and courage.”
A photo tweeted by Fox Nashville’s shows the high school players from both teams kneeling and bowing their heads on the field in prayer, as onlookers snap pictures and bow their heads in prayer, as well.
The school district initially came under fire when the liberal activist group “Americans United for Separation of Church and State” wrote a complaint earlier this year stating that there had been “instances of prayer and proselytizing at various school events at Cookeville and Upperman high schools in the area.”
On September 13, just days before the Friday display of faith, Putnam County school district officials replied to the letter, saying they “support the right of students to participate in and lead spontaneous prayer,” but agreed with Americans United for Separation of Church and State that “faculty and staff members cannot lead or participate.”
With the FDA's decision to officially approve the Pfizer COVID jab, calls to vaccinate schoolchildren and more university students will become louder and more insistent.
But, America's children and young people must be protected from unknown future side-effects of these drugs, and parents' rights must be respected!
Please SIGN this urgent petition which demands that COVID vaccine mandates for schools and universities be prohibited in every U.S. state.
This petition will be sent to the leaders of every state legislature and to every governor in the United States, urging them to pass emergency legislation banning vaccine mandates for primary, secondary and university students.
Students simply have the right to be educated without being forced to violate deeply held principles and their own bodily integrity!
But, unfortunately, some private schools, like the Jesuit-run Brophy College Prep School in Phoenix, Arizona, have already mandated the COVID vaccine for their students, in spite of massive parental opposition. If parents or students reject the vaccine, students face intrusive weekly testing and exclusion from extra-curricular activities.
Also, more and more universities have actually started to disenroll unvaccinated students. But, even where that is not happening, not taking the vaccine often subjects students to masking, extra testing and additional administrative obstacles.
And now, with the Pfizer jab approval, Joe Biden's Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, is threatening more mandates.
While it is true that the FDA approval for the Pfizer jab only pertains to those over 16 years of age, the pharmaceutical industry and some state actors have been pushing to get approval for pre-teens!
So, it stands to reason that the Federal government will try to impose vaccines on schools, for those 16 and over, as well as on all university students. But, eventually, such mandates could even apply to younger and younger schoolchildren.
That's why state legislatures and governors must fight back against any attempt to coerce school students to take a COVID vaccine against their will!
Science and logic should dictate public health policy. And both say that mandatory vaccination for children and university students is not only unnecessary, but very likely dangerous for the future health of America's youth.
The CDC reports that the rates of death, injury, and hospitalization are very, very low for children and adolescents and that COVID transmission in schools, both from student to staff and between students, is also very low.
And a European CDC study concluded that "no evidence has been found to suggest that children or educational settings are primary drivers of COVID transmission."
So, right now, we know that schoolchildren are at very low risk of becoming very ill as a result of COVID, or of even transmitting the virus.
But, we don't know how a hastily-prepared, unstudied vaccine will affect the health of millions of America's youth in the future.
Gambling with their future, and the future of our nation, should not even be entertained for one second!
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition urging state legislatures to ban COVID vaccine mandates for schools and universities - both public and private. Urge them to respect parents' rights, informed consent and bodily integrity.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Ivy League schools mandate COVID-19 vaccines for fall' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ivy-league-mandates-covid-19-vaccines-for-the-fall/
'FDA approval of Pfizer jab isn’t about our health, it’s about mandating the shots' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/fda-approval-of-pfizer-jab-isnt-about-our-health-its-about-mandating-the-shots
A school lawyer chimed in affirming the school district’s position: “Courts have consistently ruled that prayer and proselytizing cannot be sponsored by schools or school personnel.”
The public offered massive support for the high school football players who stood up for their faith, with many online expressing they are impressed with the conviction and courage of the young people.
“Kudos to these kids. There’s a huge difference between ‘separation of church and state’ and separating us from our basic rights and freedoms. The government has totally lost sight of this to the detriment of us all,” wrote one Fox News reader.
“With students like these there is hope for the United States. Students, stay strong in your beliefs and you will make the nation great again. My generation was not strong enough to stand up to the strong arm of the government,” added another.
Although founding father Thomas Jefferson said the U.S. shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” he also stated that there should be no law “prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The latter half of Jefferson’s famous declaration on the separation of church and state is what allowed Florida governor Ron Desantis to sign an executive order in June, reimplementing the practice of prayer in public schools across the state.
The new directive requires a “minute or two” of silence to be given to Florida students, at which time they can contemplate or “pray as they see fit.”
“It’s something that’s important to be able to provide each student the ability, every day, to be able to reflect and to be able to pray as they see fit,” DeSantis said during a press conference regarding the order.
“The idea that you can just push God out of every institution, and be successful — I’m sorry, our founding fathers did not believe that,” he added.
Despite the normally strict adherence to the rules when it comes to prayer in schools, a group of California parents had to file a lawsuit on September 4 when it became known that many schools in the state were requiring children to “chant” to “Aztec gods” as a form of “counter-genocide” against Christianity.
“This is all so comprehensively evil and destructive it is hard to know where to begin criticism of this dangerous, divisive, retrograde cultural vandalism,” commented Dr. Richard Land of the Christian Post in regard to California’s explicit anti-Christian curriculum.
It is not just California and Tennessee that have had anti-Christian sentiment proliferated in the public school system. Two school districts, one in Colorado and one in Virgina, recently passed shocking “transgender rights” policies for children.
Loudon County School Board in Virginia passed a policy that compels the use of “gender-neutral” and “trans” pronouns, while also instructing teachers to eliminate any gender-based activities.
Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado instructed teachers to “assess” whether or not a parent should be informed or involved in the “transition process” of their child, citing that not all parents are understanding of conditions such as transgenderism.